Abstract Self-face recognition is an experimental paradigm of self-referential processing. It reflects the process that someone can recognize one’s own face by distinguishing self from others. The brain regions involving in self-face recognition include the prefrontal cortex, insula, cingulated cortex, temporal and parietal areas. There are three stages involving in the neural mechanism of self-face recognition, including low-level sensory processing, self-referential information processing, and identity discrimination. The future research should discriminate the time course of each cognitive process of self-face recognition, and combine it with the brain areas to determine each processing stage and cognitive component in self-face recognition.